THE BLACKBIRD GIRLS by Anne Blankman: A MG Review and Giveaway

 We all have them. Books that stick in our heads after we've read the last page. Maybe it's the characters, the world-building, the settings, or the amazing way the author weaves together the plot. For me, it's all of those plus a story that touches my heart. This, my friends, is my latest favorite read:

Published in 2020 by Penguin Random House, it was off my radar. I've enjoyed Anne's books before so when I thought about connecting with other historical fiction novelists, I looked her up. In 2014 I wanted to give five stars to her debut novel, Prisoner of Night and Fog , and feel the same way about The Blackbird Girls (this link goes to a great interview with Anne). By the way, Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke (Harper Collins, 2015) was also excellent even though I didn't review it on my blog.

REVIEW

Like another historical fiction novel that I admire, REFUGEE by Alan Gratz, The Blackbird Girls has three viewpoints and several different timelines. Anne and Alan both deftly weave together story elements so that the reader is left with the sense of, "Wow--I didn't see that coming!"

The Blackbird Girls opens with the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 in Ukraine. Each of the two main protagonists, Valentina and Oksana,  have fathers who work at the nuclear power plant. Valentina is Jewish and is the victim of much anti-semitism, including taunting from her schoolmate, Oksana. Valentina's family is very afraid of expressing themselves as Jews due to government persecution and don't practice their religion. Oksana's head is full of anti-semitic propaganda she has heard from her father. As the story progresses the reader discovers that her father has poisoned her in other ways too. 

The two families live in the same apartment building but don't have much to do with each other. Although early on it is evident that the girls are enemies and the reader guesses that they will become friends (the beautiful cover shows that), it is not an easy path. Both girls are victims of prejudice and abuse and both have huge walls of distrust towards the other. 

Both of their fathers fall victim to radioactive poisoning after the meltdown in the plant, and their mothers have to quickly figure out how to help their daughters get away from the city. Valentina's mother has an escape route planned for Valentina and when Oksana's mother abandons her, she takes Oksana with them to Leningrad. She wires the only one who she thinks can offer them refuge--her mother who she hasn't seen for years.

Meanwhile, readers meet a third girl, Rifka, who lives in the Soviet Union in 1941. Her story unfolds at the same time as Valentina's and Oksana's. Rifka's mother makes her leave home to protect her from the invading Germans. She battles freezing temperatures and nearly dies before she finds shelter with a family who takes her in.

At this point in reading the book, I thought I understood the connection between the stories: two mothers who made difficult choices for their daughters' survival. 

But I was wrong. Anne Blankman indicates in the acknowledgments that the novel is based on a friend's true story about Chernobyl. She wrote to me about the true elements in the book:

When I was in ninth grade, I met a new classmate who has since become a lifelong friend. Victoria had recently emigrated from Ukraine to my small hometown in upstate New York, and as we became closer, she confided in me that she had survived Chernobyl, the massive nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union in 1986. To keep her safe, her parents made the heartbreaking decision to send their then-six-year-old daughter hundreds of miles away to live with distant relatives in Uzbekistan. 

The reason Victoria had family living so far away? Forty-five years earlier, her hosts had fled from the invading German army with scores of other Ukrainian Jews. They had ended up in Uzbekistan. These two journeys--one to run from enemy soldiers, the other to escape nuclear fallout--haunted me, and they became the inspiration for The Blackbird Girls. But I was afraid the multiple perspectives and separate timelines would prove too complicated and cumbersome for my readers, and I wrote the first draft from only Valentina's point of view. My editor encouraged me to explore Oksana and Rifka's perspectives and to flesh out the 1941 storyline. 

One of my favorite parts of the book is when the girls break through and become friends. They are attending their new school in Leningrad and on the first day, a boy teases Valentina for being Jewish and tells her to go back to Jerusalem and that no one wants her there.

In a surprise move, Oksana intervenes:

     Oksana stood up. "Nobody wants you here. Why don't you shut your mouth?"

     The boy's eyes narrowed. "What did you say to me?"

     A hush fell over the schoolyard. Children stopped playing to stare at Oksana.

     "You heard me." Oksana fisted her hands on her hips. "Leave Valentina alone."

      Valentina couldn't believe her ears. She stayed crouched on the ground, unable to move.

      "I know who you are," the boy said. "You're one of the Chernobylites. My father says you're all contaminated and you'll turn into rabid dogs."

      Oksana shoved her face into the boy's. "He's right. I think I'll take a bite out of you." She clicked her jaws, and the boy jumped back. She shouted, "You'd better run away! Next time I might bite your face!"

.....

      Oksana's face was red. She put her hands to her cheeks. "I can't believe I did that," she whispered.

       Valentina couldn't believe it, either. This couldn't be the same girl who had mocked her at their old school. 

.....

       Slowly, Valentina took the hand Oksana offered. She stood up. She knew she let go of Oksana's hand, but for some reason she didn't.... and while they played big bear's den they held hands the whole time, even though they weren't supposed to. (p. 144-5)

                           

                                             *****

This book is about events that happened forty and eighty years ago--but are as timely today with today's conflicts in Israel and Ukraine. I highly recommend it for use in middle-school classrooms and homeschool curriculums.

GIVEAWAY

Penguin Random House is offering to provide a copy of this book to one fortunate reader. Leave me a comment by January 17 and I'll enter your name. If you share this on social media or are a librarian or educator, I'll enter your name twice. Make sure you leave me your email address in the comment if you are new to my blog. U. S. addresses only. 

Join me and other bloggers on Greg Pattridge's MMGM site on Monday. 

Congratulations:

Kim Aker, a school librarian in Bland, Va won I'M TRYING TO LOVE GERMS.

Who said Middle-Grade books were only for kids?

Uncle Bob's new favorite middle-grade book.
He lived through this history.

Behind the Scenes of REFUGEE: An Interview with Alan Gratz and Giveaway-Part II

Congratulations to Connie Saunders and Jennifer Ervin for winning FIRST TIMES from last week's blog.

As promised last week, Alan Gratz  has returned to share some of the intricate process of writing his middle grade novel, REFUGEE. 

Alan autographing a copy of REFUGEE
for the Cousins Club. 

INTERVIEW

CAROL: How much time did you spend researching REFUGEE? Was that typical for all your books?

ALAN: I spent a month or two researching REFUGEE, which is typical for me.

CAROL: Why did you pick the topic?

ALAN: Writing about refugees was something I wanted to tackle. I empathize with the plight of refugees in today's world, and wanted to do something to bring that situation to the attention of school children, the way Linda Sue Park did with water in Africa and A LONG WALK TO WATER.

CAROL: At what point in that process did you realize you were going to use three different characters in three different time periods? Did you plan it or did it “just” happen? Did you know the ending when you started writing? 

ALAN: I knew I was going to write a story about three different kids in three different time periods when I began researching and outlining the book. That decision--to tell three stories--took a while to come up with on its own. But as soon as I realized I could not only show parallels between each story, but actually link the three main characters and their families across time, that's when I knew I had a novel!

CAROL: Each POV is a complete story. Did you write the 3 POV separately or concurrently the way the book appears?

ALAN: I outlined each separately, all the way out--first Josef's story, then Isabel's, then Mahmoud's--although Isabel's story was created knowing what happened to Josef, and Mahmoud's knowing what happened to the other two children. Once I had all three stories outlined, then I wrote the book linearly. That is, I wrote Josef's first chapter, then Isabel's first chapter, then Mahmoud's first chapter, and so on and so on.

CAROL: What system do you use to keep the research, plot lines, and characters straight? 

ALAN: I had a system I had developed over the years, but that has now been replaced by the awesomeness that is Scrivener. Scrivener is a great program for writers that allows you to store all your research and outline and story notes and character sketches in the same file with your manuscript--and it doesn't take a million years to load. You can click between separate screens very easily. It even has an outlining feature with faux note cards on the screen, but I prefer to do that by hand on the big pin board in my office. I'm a heavy outliner, and Scrivener allows me to keep all of my pre-writing notes in one place and at my fingertips when I'm writing.

CAROL: You make writing look easy. 😀 How many drafts? 

ALAN: Including my outline--which, again, is pretty extensive--I did eight drafts of Refugee. The first drafts see the bigger things hammered out, and see major changes to the book's structure and characters. Beginning with the fifth draft, I'm focusing on much more specific problems. By the final drafts, I'm doing line editing. After the manuscript was finished, the Author's Note went through many more revisions than the book, as I tried to stay on top of all the changes happening in American politics and policy--both for the Syrian story AND, to my surprise, the Cuban story!

CAROL: This isn’t your first multi-POV book. What have you learned in the process of writing books from several POV? 

ALAN: With multiple POV books, you have to be very careful to make sure that each POV character has a unique voice and character. Ideally, you want the reader to know whose story they're reading just by the narration and dialogue, even without names or chapter titles. So I do a lot of work on the front end to develop my POV characters, and make sure they have rich, detailed lives off the page as well as on!

GIVEAWAY

Leave me a comment for a chance to win this amazing book. If you left a comment last week, I'll add another entry. MAKE SURE you leave me your email address if you are new to my blog! Random.org will choose a winner on September 28. Like last week, if you also leave a comment through Talking Story, I'll give you another chance (PLUS there are other great books on this topic in the Refugee issue!).

REFUGEE- A Review and Giveaway- Part I

This is a busy week on my blog. TWO giveaways running concurrently! 

WARNING: Reading this book will make you stay up late and the characters will haunt you long after you finish reading it.

Readers of my blog are no strangers to Alan Gratz's books. You're a click away from seeing what I thought of Prisoner B-3087, The League of Seven, and Samurai Shortstop. And believe it or not, I still have Dragon Lantern on my TBR shelf. It's no use. I can't keep up with this t-shirt and jeans-always-in-a-hat favorite of SCBWI-Carolinas and now a NY Times Bestselling author!

Review

It's difficult to know how to review a book that takes the lives of three young people from three different periods of time, who are escaping from atrocities in three different countries and weaves them into one volume. Each chapter tells a different part of each refugee's story and each (see warning above) ends in a cliff-hanger. Masterfully written and entwined together, the reader never loses track of who is speaking and the events that character faces.

In 1938, Josef Landau is a twelve-year-old German Jew who's family barely escapes the concentration camp. In 1994, Isabel Fernandez is an eleven-year-old who is hungry, musical, and afraid.  Castro has been making life difficult for her and her fellow Cubans for years. In 2015, Mahmoud Bishara is a twelve-year-old stocky Syrian who prefers to stay invisible so that he can survive artillery shells and bombs.

Although they are worlds and cultures apart, their stories intermingle. Their stories include broken glass, threatening soldiers, harrowing escapes, unbelievable obstacles, bodies of water which swallow family members, music, close-knit family ties, and heroism on each character's part.

Here are a few bits and pieces to entice you to read this book:

After Mahmoud's apartment building is bombed and crumbles his father says, "We should have gone long ago. Ready or not, if we want to live, we have to leave Syria." (p. 55)

This scene takes place soon after Isabel's family escapes to Florida in a makeshift boat their neighbors built.

They [the fathers] kept arguing, but the engine and the slap of the boat against the saves drowned their words out for Isabel. She wasn't paying any attention anyway. All she could think about was the ninety miles they still had to go, and the water pouring in from the gunshot hole in the side of the boat. (p. 65)

Josef turns 13 onboard the MS St. Louis. Like other Jewish boys, it is time for him to have his bar Mitzvah, which the men on board arrange. His father, who was tormented in Dachau, refuses to attend believing that the Nazis will snatch him away.  Here is Josef in this sad yet foreshadowing scene:

Josef felt like someone had yanked his heart from his chest. In all the times he'd dreamed of this day, his father had always been there to recite a blessing with him. But maybe this is what becoming a man is, Josef thought. Maybe becoming a man means not relying on your father anymore. (p. 75)

While Mahmoud's family meets one obstacle after another as they seek to get to Germany, they meet a Palestinian refugee who left his home in 1948 during the first Arab-Israeli war. Since I was listening to Blood Brothers, the story of the displaced Palestinians (to be reviewed and given away soon)--this man's help to the Bishara family added another dimension to the history and plight of refugees. 

On their cobbled-together boat Isabel thinks about her beloved music.

This journey was a song, Isabel realized, a son cubano, and each part of it was a verse. The first verse had been the riot: a blast of trumpets, the rat-a-tat-tat of a snare drum. Then the pre-chorus of trading her trumpet for gasoline--the piano that gave the son its rhythm--and then the chorus itself: leaving home. They were still leaving home, still hadn't gotten to where they were going. They would return to the chorus again and again before they were done. (p.155-6)

Floating on a dinghy in the Mediterranean Sea with his mother, Mahmoud is hoping to be rescued. In the dark he hears a boat, but can't see it. 

But the sound of the motor stills stayed frustratingly, agonizingly, far away. If only whoever was on the boat could see him, Mahmoud thought. All his life he'd practiced being hidden. Unnoticed.  Now, at last, when he most needed to be seen, he was truly invisible. (p.192)

Josef contemplates joining nine other men who plan to storm the bridge of the St. Louis and demand that the ship be run aground in America instead of being returned to Germany. As much as he wishes he could return to childhood he thinks,

But he wasn't a kid anymore. He had responsibilities. Like keeping his sister and his mother safe. Papa had told him what the concentration camps were like. He couldn't let that happen to Ruthie and his mother. (p. 253)

Alan expertly wraps up the three refugee's stories in an unexpected ending. This is a timely book that both adults and readers from ages 12 and up will enjoy; it is also be a tremendous curriculum resource.

Trailer

Giveaway

I am giving away a copy of REFUGEE in conjunction with the fall issue of Talking Story. Leave a comment here to enter once. Leave a comment through Talking Story and you'll have another chance! Come back next week for a look behind the scenes of writing REFUGEE. You'll have another chance to win the book! Giveaway ends September 28. 

The Good Braider: A Review and a Giveaway

When Tracey Adams of Adams Literary recommends a book, I listen.  As a result, when I was given the opportunity by Recorded Books to listen and review the book Tracey recommended,  the good braider (Skyscape, 2012) I jumped at the chance. For one fortunate blog reader, you'll be glad that I did. Following this review you'll find directions on how to win this beautifully produced audio CD, narrated by Cherise Boothe. Written by Terry Farish, the good braider was selected in 2013 as the Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year and a book of Outstanding Merit. You can find the study guide here; Farish has donated this book to the Worldreader program.

South Sudan. A nation torn by civil war as well as religious and ethnic conflict. The country from which Viola and her mother escape to the United States. The story told poignantly in free verse, is captured in this trailer:


Viola's father is a rebel soldier who has been gone for five years and she lives with her beloved grandmother, mother, and younger brother, Francis, in Juba. Their lives are full of two enemies: the Sudanese soldiers who rape women and kill young boys or conscript them for the army, and poverty. Yet the family are embraced and loved in their community. 

Viola yearns for freedom, and to escape to America where her uncle lives. When she is raped by a Sudanese soldier, she is full of shame knowing that she will no longer be valuable as a bride:
      At home I rub palm oil into my mother's hair.
     She is silent. 
     She knows. Everybody knows.
     The story rolls along like drumbeats from house to house.
     Viola has lost her bride wealth. 
Her daughter's devastation and pain precipitates her mother's push to escape. But the family must leave her grandmother and beloved village behind. Although they journeys thousands of miles, Viola can't leave behind her feeling of being ruined as a woman. While waiting to be approved to immigrate to America she thinks:
      I cannot imagine my future and my past is a snake, ready to strike.
Francis sickens and dies while they are waiting to leave Africa. His loss is huge to both Viola and her mother. She wakens from a nightmare about the rape and clutches one of her few possessions, a book her grandmother gave her: 
    I hold it to me and breathe
    as if I could breathe life back into us all. 
The metaphor of braided hair weaves throughout the book. It was an important way in which the women connected with one another. Viola learned how to make tiny rows of braids from her mother:
    When I was young, my little fingers rode on her long              narrow ones 
Explaining the death of her brother to her friend Lokolumbe, Viola says:
    I am not who I used to be.
    We were three, like three strands. 
    We lay, three of us, on the steamer warming each other.
    Without the third, I don't know what to do.
She asks him:
    What does it matter about a refugee’s hair?
    Why not have knots like a child? What does it matter?”
    He looks ahead into the sand.
    As tall as I am,
    I come only to Lokolumbe’s shoulder.
    He does not answer at first.
    We both keep walking in the desert,
    following a fragile dream of America.
    “Braids are from our culture,” he says, this boy who   read and knows all the American capital cities.
    “They are the African designs we give to the world.     When you are ready, you will braid.”
 After almost two years of living among other refugees in a church courtyard in Cairo, Viola and her mother receive the blue card needed to go to America. But life in an apartment in Kennedy Park in Portland, Maine has its own set of challenges. The language, culture, the color of the people--even the weather--are all foreign. Eventually, Viola gets used to her new school, the new technology, and different foods, but she feels caught between two cultures:
    I wish I could see my grandmother’s bright eyes.
    I have been here less than a year,
    yet I do not think I can be all Sudanese, all the time.
    Already, am I part American?
    I don’t feel like any one thing. 
Her friend Jackie, explains the gap between Sudan and America:
    “If you live in Kennedy Park, you remember.
    The elders make sure you remember.
    Your mother makes sure you remember.
    If you go to McDonald’s, your mother makes you remember,
    ‘You need African food,’ she says.
    ‘You cannot eat this food. You will die!
    That’s what they say if you forget to remember.”
Viola's confusion is reflected in her feelings about her hair:
    That night I stand at the mirror
    and see my ragged, broken hair.
    With scissors I cut, cut,
    cut, until my hair all around
    is cut as close to my head as I can make it.
    When I am done,
    I gaze at my unflinching eyes.
    Hey ! I tell Lokolumbe,
    this is the way I look in America
Viola and her mother survive the turbulence of Viola's friendship with Andrew:
     A girl as skinny as the Nile on a map of Africa and a boy with red hair who smells like fish. 
but it is not without a run-in with government agencies and agony for both mother and daughter. Viola confides her despair to her guidance counselor:
   “I am not doing well. I am not American.
    Or Sudanese.
    I’m not in Sudan and not really in Maine.
    Or maybe I’m in both of them
    at the same time.
    I’m in someplace I’m making up.
    Even talking to you.
    This story about the soldier . . .
    my people
    would never talk about it.”
    Still I go on, leaning into her.
    “I don’t do the Sudanese braids
    in my hair we all do in my culture.
    Why don’t I? I don’t know.”
    I rub my hair again. I laugh
    and hold my hands out, palms open,
    my body is all question.
Farish's simple, yet eloquent free verse ends Viola's story with hope. She misses the feeling of braiding other people's hair and in the end she braids a white girl's hair and is wearing braided extensions in her own hair. 
In the final scene, the reader sees Viola playing with a young child:
    The nights have gotten longer.
    I sit on the couch beside my mother with Jamal,
    a solid, warm weight plopped
    in my lap. He is singing the names of
    animals he looks at in a picture book.
    Out the window the moon is shining.
    My mother tells me to sit on the floor.
    I do with Jamal still in my lap,
    and her strong fingers
    begin to massage jojoba oil into my hair.
    Jamal holds the book high in the air,
    then drops his head back against my belly,
    grinning upside down at me.
    “Who is this boy,” I tease,
    “this one who eats Cocoa Puffs for breakfast?”
     I scoop him up the way Habuba would have.
     I play the traditional game. “Who wants this child?
    Anybody want this child?” and pretend to pass him
    around to Frieda or my mother while he squeals.
    My mother describes for him
    the feel of the earth when the elephants walk,
    and Jamal’s eyes grow wide.
    I shut my eyes and can feel the heat
    of the cook fire in our courtyard.
    Then comes a hint of the smell
    of the earth by the Nile.
    I’m an American girl in Portland, Maine.
    But I am also
    a girl from Juba.

*******************

To win this audio CD please follow these directions:

1. Leave me a comment with your email address (if I don't have it.)

2. Become a new follower of this blog and I'll add your name twice.

3. For each time you post the link on social media I'll enter your name again.

4. Drawing to be held before noon on Saturday, May 31.